DfR Solutions offers the following Electrical Circuit Design Review services:
SPICE
SPICE is a general purpose circuit simulation program for nonlinear dc nonlinear transient, and linear ac analyses. Circuits may contain resistors, inductors, capacitors, mutual inductors, independent voltage and current sources, four types of dependent sources, lossless and lossy transmission lines (two separate implementations), switches, uniform distributed RC lines, and the five most common semiconductor devices: diodes, BJTs, JFETs, MESFETs, and MOSFETs.
SPICE is used to provide a reasonably detailed analysis of circuits containing active components such as resistors, capacitors, and inductors. SPICE is a circuit simulation program, not a logic simulation program. Therefore SPICE considers the voltages and currents in a circuit to be continuous quantities, not quantized into high/low values. The original SPICE program has given rise to a variety of commercial implementations. In addition, PSPICE has analog and digital libraries of standard components (such as NAND, NOR, flip-flops, and other digital gates, op amps, etc.). This makes it a useful tool for a wide range of analog and digital applications. All analyses can be done at different temperatures. The default temperature is 300K.
Through SPICE, DfR Solutions can help you capture potential timing issues, optimize component selection, and understand your circuits sensitivity to noise an other variations in input.
Component Stress Analysis
DfR has partnered with BQR to offer fiXtress™ - a virtual PCB prototyping tool for stress detection. fiXtress compares circuit simulation results to a component's power safe operating limits and identifies problematic components. It will alert about stressed components due to power dissipation, junction temperature, and current/voltage violations.
fiXtress leverages a broad range of sophisticated algorithms using a unique approach, which allows PCB designers the ability to perform a PCB-level simulation that includes easy-to-get and realistic electrical stress models.
For more information on fiXtress, click here.
EMI/EMC
DfR can help you avoid the far-too-common pitfalls of electromagnetic (EMC) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) problems by reviewing your design early in the new product development process (NPD). Our design review analyzes all aspects of your electrical circuit to identify any potential EMC sources and sensitive circuits for EMI. After our review, we provide specific recommendations which would help improve circuit robustness to EMC/EMI. Card layouts and packaging are also critical and are examined in detail. Whether it is ensuring compliance or resolving circuit noise and cross-talk, we provide a complete solution.
Why design for EMI/EMC? Ask your accountant. Or your boss. Hoping to capture problems during test, whether internal or in a test laboratory, is too little, too late. Your design is fixed, the tooling has been ordered, the housing has been fabricated and your customers are waiting for shipment. Where are you going to find the time or the place to put that additional capacitor or move that trace to stop your EMI/EMC problem?
For more information on our EMI/EMC design capability, or for an initial discussion, please contact us at 301-474-0607, or send us an email.
If you have a specific question about any of the services listed above please feel free to email us.